


Personal Notes (29) Moving Day

by longhairshortfuse



Series: Carlos's Secret Diary [29]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Moving In Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:51:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longhairshortfuse/pseuds/longhairshortfuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos does most of the work to move them in to their new home and finds something... scientifically interesting in Cecil's bags.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Notes (29) Moving Day

We found a house that would suit us, almost the first place we looked at after rejecting one for being just outside our budget and another for smelling like something died there and lay undiscovered for a month. It had most of the main features on the wish list we agreed on, we would just have to manage without the underground science lair and the recording bunker. The décor was a little unusual in places but nothing we couldn’t live with for a few weeks while we settled in. Except the kitchen which was coated with so much crimson paint. I joked that it must be to hide the spatters but Cecil did not find that funny at all and almost vetoed the house on the basis of appalling events of unimaginable horror. I think we should perhaps change the nature of the movies we watch, although I like watching horror movies with Cecil because he revels in the fake fright, jumps at the scary bits and snuggles in to me delightfully, hiding his eyes if it is gory. The house was surprisingly affordable for its size and location so close to town.

We signed the rental agreement a few days later, handed over our deposit and collected two sets of keys to the house. Our house. Of course we went straight over just to wander around the empty property without the letting agent, pointing at spaces and walls, deciding what to put where, agreeing what furniture we needed to buy. We needed almost everything. We wanted things that were _ours_ rather than _his_ or _mine_. The main bedroom was decorated with heart design wallpaper. Anatomically accurate hearts with aorta and vena cava, atria and ventricles, some dissected open and some looking like they might start to beat at any moment. I kind of liked it, Cecil wasn’t keen but said leave it, he could probably get used to it eventually. Our bedroom led to a fully tiled wet-room with excellent drainage. That was a major factor in choosing this house, although I did wonder why the drain had a macerator unit under the oversized, moveable grille. I thought it best not to mention this feature to Cecil. He has a very vivid imagination. 

We walked from room to room, imagining how it would look after we moved in. The spare room was bland, the only unusual feature being a false wooden door, possibly oak, that looked like it should be a closet but couldn’t possibly be if the internal dimensions I measured matched the external dimensions of the wall in which it was set. It did not open and had no doorknob or handle. There was a landing where the stairs bent around a half-turn with a door to a little bathroom that smelled of fresh paint.

Downstairs was a narrow hallway leading from the front door to the stairs, a large lounge on the left leading through to a kitchen extension big enough to accommodate a small dining table and on the right a separate dining room that would serve as a study so that Cecil could write without me interfering too much by balancing creative flight with science fact. I offered to repaint the kitchen before we moved in. The red was really quite oppressive. We decided on plain white for now, postponing the decision about what colour we wanted. It took four coats to obliterate the blood-red almost completely.

Mercifully, there were no carpets. The letting agent had suggested to the owners that they sand and varnish the floorboards upstairs and lay tiles on the recently-replaced concrete floors downstairs. I didn’t tell Cecil in advance, I wanted to give him a surprise, but I redecorated the room that was to be his study. Originally bright yellow, I painted it lilac and hyacinth and traced out an audio wave design in silver and white. I wonder if he will notice that I used a textbook illustration of amplitude modulation and frequency modulation as inspiration. I built a desk for him and moved in the sofa from my apartment, disguised with a throw that I received as a gift from the team. It had a design based on Feynman diagrams.

I had more spare time than Cecil for preparing our house. I arrived in Night Vale with one suitcase, one portable telescope, a small collection of essential books and accumulated very little in the way of personal belongings since then. I took time off from the lab, leaving Gio in charge as Ell has been busy for weeks arguing our case for extended funding. I got regular email updates but her phone was off. I assumed she had lost it or broken it or left her charger behind. She said that negotiations were going “as well as can be expected under difficult circumstances” and that “natural wastage” had been discussed. It sounded like the next postgrads to finish gathering data might not be replaced. I wondered what would happen to me if the lab was forced to close. Could I still afford to live here with Cecil? I found it hard to breathe, my heart rate increased and I had to sit on the floor to concentrate on calming myself. I must have been overcome by volatile organic compounds from the paint. 

Cecil, by contrast, had an incredible accumulation of belongings none of which he wanted to discard. Not even the collection of monoclinic pyroxene ovoids that he keeps boxed in the back of his closet or his old scout uniform from years ago complete with badges that indicate that he was a very good scout indeed although I didn’t recognise any of the symbols. One might have been either for knots or for octopus wrestling, another for either explosives or projectile vomiting. There was an assortment of silk scarves I had never seen him wear. After finishing painting at our new home, it took a couple of days, I packed my belongings in about half an hour then went to help Cecil. He had a collection of bags and boxes ready and gave me very specific instructions about how to pack neatly before he headed out to work. It took hours, but I didn’t mind at all. He trusted me to sort through his belongings. I investigated a few bags he had already packed, for science of course, and found a small number of unusual items I would have to find the right opportunity to ask about. Some I did not recognise at all, others made me catch my breath and want to call him to come home. Right now. One item I pocketed for later.

We had shopped for furniture as soon as we settled on what we needed and arranged for delivery the day after we got the keys. I put the house in order as best I could with Estrella's assistance. It looked under-furnished until I started to unpack and fill shelves and cupboards. We had a new bed with a cast iron frame, a huge wardrobe for Cecil's clothing, a smaller one for mine, a new four-seater sofa and a dining table. Estrella excused herself as soon as the place, our place, started to look like a home instead of a house, saying she was meeting Aleck and Susan in town to "meet someone" they knew. I felt for her. Awkward blind dates suck, especially when it is clear, to you at least, that the other party just isn't your type. Most of the unpacking was done. Only Cecil's bags remained. 

He arrived home... Home! how I savoured that word. How it meant so much more than I expected, how I knew that we would be together every night, wake up together every morning, share every part of each other's lives. How it was so much more than just sharing a place to live. How we had opened a joint bank account for household expenses. How he had joked about maybe putting my name on the lease as Carlos Palmer then laughed it off as my heart pounded in my chest and my knees went weak and I forgot how to speak. Like a fool I thought I had been in love before. Cecil showed me that I was wrong. 

He arrived home earlier than usual and caught me putting new linen on our new bed. He grinned, hugged me and started to unpack his bags, putting things carefully in drawers and on hangers. When he had emptied the last bag he frowned and looked around the floor then shook out the empty bags. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and said, "have you lost something?" as I snapped a set of padded handcuffs onto the iron bed frame. "We will have to test these, for science of course, later on."

I believe that is the only time I have ever seen Cecil speechless.

**Author's Note:**

> Oooh I missed something! Re-numbered.


End file.
